The Village: Double Standards for Everyone!

My recent switch from night shifts to day shifts is a godsend on Iowa caucus day. I haven't heard Chris Matthews' lunkhead logic even once.

On the January 3 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, while discussing possible outcomes of the Iowa Democratic caucuses that evening, MSNBC host Chris Matthews asserted that if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) were to "squeak" out a victory, she will nonetheless have been "rejected here in Iowa by two-thirds of the Democratic Party." Matthews added that she would be "lucky to get 33 percent" and went on to say that a "low 30 percent" result would represent "a resounding rejection" of Clinton.

Earlier in the show, Matthews predicted that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would win 18 percent of votes in the Iowa Republican caucuses, although in contrast with his comments about Clinton, Matthews did not assert that if he is right, McCain will have been "rejected" by 82 percent of Iowa Republican caucus participants. Indeed, while Matthews characterized a "low 30 percent" result for Clinton as negative, he suggested on the January 2 edition of MSNBC's Hardball that if McCain were to receive 18 percent of the vote, he would be "the big hero."

The caucuses are also over, I guess, and Clinton lost. And McCain won New Hampshire. It makes it so much easier when the media makes the decisions for us!

(Just so I can slip in a prediction thread before the actual voting starts in a 1/2 hour, I think Romney's going to steal it from Huckabee on the Republican side, but the media will claim McCain won. And Obama looks like he's sitting pretty on the Democratic side, though I could see a real Edwards surge at the finish.)

UPDATE: 12 year-olds rule our discourse.

Hillary stepped onto the parked press bus in Indianola for about 90 seconds to deliver bagels and coffee, and I'm not sure what this says about Clinton and the press — the chill, I think, comes from both sides — but it was a strange moment. She expressed her sympathies that we're away from our families and "significant others," tried a joke at the expense of her press secretary, and paused. Nobody even shouted a question, whether because of the surprise, the assumption that she wouldn't actually answer, or the sheer desire to end the encounter.

One reporter compared the awkwardness to running unexpectedly into an ex-girlfriend.

"Maybe we should go outside and warm up," said another, as Clinton exited into the freezing air.

Screw all of them. They have no business even being allowed to vote, let alone shaping the news for the public.